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Big milestone this week: I actually drove in the snow. Yes, if you’re wondering, it does snow in Arkansas, but we don’t have equipment to clear the roads, so a snow day usually means just cozying up at home and waiting for things to melt. Here in Denver, it turns out, a snow day is just another day. You and my insurer will be happy to know I managed just fine. Side streets remain snowy but passable, and on main roads, it’s like snow didn’t even happen.

This is the temp when I took the girls to school on Thursday. When Jon left for work, it was TWO.

Ben Carson, who previously said he didn’t feel qualified to take a cabinet position, has been nominated for Housing and Urban Development. Interestingly, he had no policy proposals in the HUD arena on his presidential campaign platform, and has called our country’s fair housing laws “communism.”

We hear a lot about how the left cares too much about “political correctness.” I liked this piece about the right-wing counterpart, “patriotic correctness.“

When we lived in Charleston for Jon’s residency, we always parked behind a big, abandoned federal building near Marion Square when we went to the Farmer’s Market. Now it’s apparently a hip, Mad Men-esque hotel with a restaurant called Henrietta’s, and I want to go to there.

And also from the same author on Deadspin, a point with which I am in complete agreement: Fuck Tweetstorms. If you need to say it in more than a handful of tweets, write it on a blog and tweet the link. Twitter is not for essays.

A lot of us need to learn this lesson: Every single relationship in your life can’t be perfectly settled and understood and resolved. You can’t get closure with everyone. You can’t have perfect mutual understanding with everyone. You can love someone who doesn’t respect you and not respect them, either. You can love someone who makes you incredibly angry. You can love someone who is very broken, who sees you as broken, too. You can love something that is broken and can never be fixed. Don’t shut off your love. That’s not the answer. But stop trying to fix something that is not fixable.

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Best drink I made this week was this pumpkin, sage, whiskey concoction. here’s the recipe if you want it.

I’m definitely in the denial stage of election grief. In fact, I think I’m going to do something radical and not read any news from Thursday-Sunday. All the legislative offices will be closed, anyway, so I won’t be able to call anyone or try to change anything anyway. My brain could use the break. So, here’s one last roundup before Thanksgiving, and may we all enjoy a respite for the holiday.

I don’t remember enough of my US Presidents 1870-1917 class to say this totally definitively (I remember the phrase “robber barons” being thrown around a lot), but it’s pretty safe to say we’re about to experience the most corrupt US presidency ever. This piece by Newsweek on the Trump Organization’s conflicts of interest with US foreign policy is ONLY SCRATCHING THE SURFACE. The Trump family is going to be using the US presidency to line their pockets. And we’re already seeing it happen, like Ivanka sitting in on meetings with Japanese leaders, Ivanka sitting in on calls with Argentine leaders, and foreign diplomats scrambling to spend money at the new Trump hotel in DC which opened just in time for him to take office. Maybe Trump’s secret plan to defeat ISIS involves losing our main ally in the region, Turkey, because Trump’s business partner is at odds with Turkey’s president?

Want to know more about the white nationalist movement now that Trump has made one of its leaders his right-hand strategist? There’s an explainer for that too. In case you weren’t sure, it’s based on racism:

White nationalism, he said, is the belief that national identity should be built around white ethnicity, and that white people should therefore maintain both a demographic majority and dominance of the nation’s culture and public life.

And here’s a good piece to read just in case someone is going to want to talk liberal vs. conservative economics with you over turkey. Robert Reich wants to know why the conservative argument that economic growth depends on low regulation, low taxes, and low wages doesn’t pan out when you look at the states. California, Washington, and Oregon have some of the highest taxes, highest regulations, and highest wages, and have booming economies. Kansas and Texas, where the GOP has been free to follow their economic philosophies, isn’t doing nearly as well. It’s almost as if facts are liberal, folks!

A lovely piece to read before Thanksgiving: How to Sit at the Table with Those who Hurt and Offend You. (I almost want to add a disclaimer, though: if someone you are expected to sit at a table with fundamentally rejects a key part of who you are to the point of hostility, like say your sexual orientation or religious faith, you are not REQUIRED to do this. Sometimes you must protect the integrity of your precious soul more than you must compromise.)

Maybe if we all wear turkey hats at Thanksgiving, we’ll look so silly it will be impossible to get too serious about politics at the table. Here’s a cute free printable.

I hope you have a fantastic Thanksgiving. I leave you with a prayer the girls learned while studying the Ojibwe tribe in school: “Grandfather, look at our brokenness. We know that in all creation, only the human family has strayed from the Sacred Way. We know that we are the ones…who divided…and we are the ones…who must come back together…to walk in the Sacred Way. Grandfather, Sacred One, teach us love, compassion, honor, that we may heal the earth and heal each other.”

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Greetings from Denver, where we are enjoying our first snowfall. It was 24 degrees when we took the girls to school this morning, and I have now confirmed that my new snow boots are toasty and grippy. So that’s good.

Here’s the thing. Every single day, there is some new Trump horror. Usually more than one. How are we going to keep caring when it is just an avalanche of terrible? I think all the “give Trump a chance” folks can pretty well shut up because with every staffing choice he’s made, he’s confirmed that the racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia were actually the plan, never mere rhetoric. Every appointment to the cabinet is a new reason to protest in the streets. I don’t want these link roundups to become numbing, but I think I want off this planet more this week than I did on election night. This is really going to be a horrifying four years.

Erasing the Obama presidency, when it comes to LGBT rights, could begin with scotching executive orders that protect federal employees and contractors. Then it could go further, with Trump starting a rulemaking process to reverse regulations that protect LGBT patients, renters, and the homeless. Not only erasing Obama’s guidance to protect students and workers, Trump could replace those policies with new directives that say transgender workers and students are explicitly not protected. He could reverse LGBT rights in the military — re-instating bans on transgender or gay service members.

I have had it up to here with the narratives that all the scared white folks voted for Trump because of “economic reasons” and not racism. This column is a brilliant takedown of those arguments.

The closing of a tire plant doesn’t automatically make you vote for a volatile, vindictive dollar-store demagogue who has had his eye on his own bottom line from the instant he launched his campaign and whose only truly consistent position throughout that campaign has been that he will in any number of shifting ways make minorities suffer.

Is this a safe space to admit that while I love Amy Poeheler, I don’t like Parks and Rec? I tried, y’all. However, this letter from “Leslie Knope” about what to do now might make me give it another try. Let’s fight like mofos.

I work hard and I form ideas and I meet and talk to other people who feel like me, and we sit down and drink hot chocolate (I have plenty) and we plan. We plan like mofos. We figure out how to fight back, and do good in this infuriating world that constantly wants to bend toward the bad. And we will be kind to each other, and supportive of each other’s ideas, and we will do literally anything but accept this as our fate.

I find it hard to believe that we now live in a world where we have to wear safety pins to let other people know we respect their humanity and will stand with them against bigots and bullies, but apparently we do. You can buy a pretty one that benefits the ACLU here.

Please please please, stop saying that you want unity. Unity was Hillary Clinton’s message, and you rejected it for the guy who called Mexicans rapists. What you’re asking for now isn’t unity, it’s submission, and you’re not going to get it.

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Yes, I know this post title is ridiculous, but sometimes I can’t resist the fact that my online alias sounds vaguely cowgirl-esque, also I am ridiculous.

Expect this site to get back to its pre-kids political roots for the next four years, folks. If you’re here just for cute kids and recipes, you might be sorely disappointed, but I’ve been blogging since 2008, and I majored in political science. I think about and talk about politics a lot.

One thing I used to do more was share link roundups. Since I think my Facebook friends would appreciate it if I didn’t post every single link I want to share, I decided to bring that back. Maybe every Friday I’ll do this? I promise they won’t all be OMG WE JUST ELECTED A FASCIST-themed, but that’s definitely where we’re at this week. Here we go!

I shared this one on my Facebook page and got some pushback from dudes who either failed to read it or lack reading comprehension. Anyway, here’s a great analogy to use on anyone who gives you flack for saying that Trump supporters are OK with racism. They bought the whole package when they cast their votes, and that package included a big chunk of racism. They decided it was worth it. That’s on them. Also, I told those dudes on my page that they are free to find other blogs more in line with their sensibilities, because this is obviously not one of them.

This election, you had two major Presidential providers. One offered you the Stronger Together plan, and the other offered you the Make America Great Again plan. You chose the Make America Great Again plan. The thing is, the Make America Great Again has in its package active, institutionalized racism (also active, institutionalized sexism. And as it happens, active, institutionalized homophobia). And you know it does, because the people who bundled up the Make America Great Again package not only told you it was there, they made it one of the plan’s big selling points.

Trump beat out Clinton with voters at every income level bracket except those citizens who make under $49,999. The working class did not vote against its interests. The middle and upper class sold them out.

If this is going to be a time of healing, we must first put the responsibility for healing where it belongs: at the feet of Donald Trump, a sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fueled his campaign with bigotry and hate. Winning the electoral college does not absolve Trump of the grave sins he committed against millions of Americans. Donald Trump may not possess the capacity to assuage those fears, but he owes it to this nation to try.

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Have you heard of the Southern Girl Academy? If not, well, bless your heart. A couple of my fabulous friends, Kerri and Savannah, created the SGA to share the sass, style, and charms of what it means to be a Southern girl with natives and non-natives alike. Each week, SGA features a new post from a fun new board member about some area crucial to “what it means to be F’ing Southern: Foundations, Fixing Up, Fine Arts, Festivities, Fellowship Halls and Foreign Integration.” They’ve featured posts about food, fashion, football, the fine art of swearing, and more. I’m proud to be a board member, and this week, you can find my post on Southern literature, which is chock full of freaks, prophets, and ghosts, and is deeply rooted in the South as not just a place, but practically a character.

For folks who have landed here via the SGA post: welcome! You might be interested in a post I wrote recently about Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and the idea of beauty vs. ugliness.

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At age three, I memorized “Madeline” down to the page turns and convinced my mother I had learned to read. That is, until, impressed with her little genius, she handed me another book, and I began to recite, “In an old house in Paris, all covered with vines.” That’s when the jig was up.

Still, this was the sign that I was ready to read, and they began teaching me. By the time I reached the first grade, I was devouring Nancy Drew books. I still vividly remember getting busted with “The Quest for the Missing Map” under my desk during math class. Though you wouldn’t know it now, I was a very shy kid. Maybe it was because of the shuttling back and forth in the wake of my parents’ divorce when I was five, but I didn’t have all that many good friends as a young kid. Books were my constant companion. I could be found up at early hours, eager to get back to reading. When upset, when frightened, when stressed, I could be found reading.

At some point, my parents started paying me to memorize poems (and my father wonders how I ended up an English major despite his best scientist efforts…), and one I memorized was this one, by Emily Dickinson:

THERE is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.

This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

The last line about the human soul particularly resonates with me because books have sustained my soul in the roughest of times. Some even became old friends that I revisited over and over again, their familiar words becoming a constant source of comfort, like “Little Women.” Some even became like diaries, with my thoughts scribbled in the margins. At some point, I began underlining particularly poignant or interesting passages, a habit I’m now unable to break. For me, books are interactive things.

Which is why a blog I found via Andrew Sullivan is particularly interesting to me. It’s called Forgotten Bookmarks, and is written by a used bookstore employee, cataloging the things found left behind in used books, things like postcards and photographs and scrawled notes-to-self. It has me wondering about books I’ve read and passed on along the way (I have a habit of giving away books to strangers on occasion), and what I could have left behind, and whether anyone has found these things.

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Welcome!

My name is Sarah Orsborn. I'm a writer living in Denver, CO, with my husband Jon, our four-year-old twin daughters Etta and Claire, who has Spina Bifida, our two dogs Olive and Bessie, and one not-so-Tinycat.

As a child, I nicknamed myself Ernie Bufflo, and from this quirk, my blog takes its name.